In a Truist survey of 49 US hospital administrators, managing approximately 572 hospitals (63,000 beds), roughly 8% of all US hospitals, one key takeaway was that capital equipment budgets and spending for the next twelve months has declined from the Truist 2Q22 survey, from a slight positive (+0.2%) to a low negative (-1.9%) in 3Q22.
This hurt for those in medtech selling capital equipment, but at the AdvaMed annual meeting in Boston (were you there?) at the CEOs Unplugged panels, there were glimmers of hope that superior strategic, out of the box thinking could turn capital equipment sales around.
CEO Mick Farrell of ResMed told the audience that ResMed is a company that helps “137 million people in 140 countries to sleep better, breathe better, and live better lives outside the hospital.” ResMed manufactures medical capital equipment that is connected to the cloud to treat sleep apnea and COPD. The capex is called AirSense and AirCurve™ machines, and one of its most important sales drivers is the myAir app.
Mick told the audience that his team pivoted from considering patient data with the decade old ‘how do we monetize patient data’ business model to one that gives back important data to patients and protects ResMed’s share of market in the highly competitive CPAP space. myAir is an app that is an exclusive feature available to AirSense and AirCurve CPAP users. If ever there was a space that needed disrupting, it's the CPAP space. My mother had a CPAP and she hated using it, but it was important, so she did.
Now ResMed patients are excited to use their CPAP and see what their sleep scores are using the myAir app. In the process of gamifying patient sleep scores, ResMed gets to keep patient data and use it for analytical purposes that could yield improved patient outcomes and reduce costs.
Mick Farrell says that by tipping the business model from monetizing patient data strategy to a strategy providing data that patients find valuable has built a moat around the ResMed AirSense CPAP market share. This is an important digital strategy to grow and protect capital equipment sales in a time when patients are careful with every dollar and doctors are painfully aware that patient compliance with CPAP machines is poor.
Mick’s team is busy providing their own data to physicians and payers to show that the myAir/AirSense strategy has improved patient outcomes and that software as a service (SaaS) can be part of the health care ecosystem that brings high value to Medtech companies.
CONTACT US
LOOKING FOR A PARTNER TO UNCOVER DIGITAL HEALTH INSIGHTS FOR YOUR MEDICAL DEVICE?
OUR LAST THREE PROJECTS WERE:
Market testing for a new disruptive digital health product
Go to market strategy for a medtech start up
Medtech price sensitivity analysis – Medtech capex